CA - Bank of America Corporation (BAC) Bernstein's 40th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference (Transcript)

2024-05-30 17:59:06 ET

Bank of America Corporation (BAC)

Bernstein's 40th Annual Strategic Decisions Conference

May 30, 2024, 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Brian Moynihan - CEO

Conference Call Participants

John McDonald - Bernstein Stock Analyst

Presentation

John McDonald

Okay. We're ready to get going. Thanks, everyone. We're very happy to have Bank of America back today. CEO Brian Moynihan. Brian, thanks so much for coming back.

Brian Moynihan

John, it's been many times. Good to see you again.

Question-and-Answer Session

Q - John McDonald

Great. Well, I think we'll start off, like we always do with your macro view. It's been almost a year since the last fed hike. On employment it's good, but inflation a little sticky. What's your recent Bank of America data telling you about the healthy consumer?

Brian Moynihan

So a couple things I think would be interesting, your colleagues here. Number one, if you look at, what we talk about a lot is the spending the money moving through the consumers accounts, which is $4 trillion plus a year, which is money moving out in the economy. Cash out of the ATM's, cheques return, settle payments, debit credit cards. And if you look year-to-date, that's growing about 3.5%. So that number doesn't mean a lot unless it has a context.

If you looked at it May of '23 versus May of '22, it had probably been like high single-digits, maybe even double-digits. So it slowed down coming through the summer of last year and sits at a level, which is about where it would be in a very low growth, low inflation environment economy, sort of where it was in '16, '17, '18.

It's actually a little bit under that. That would be more of four. And it's being, so that's one. It's aggregate level. The growth rate has slowed. It is still growing, but it has slowed. It's consistent where it was, when we had more of a normalized environment around us.

And the way people are spending money, is consistent with what you read about, which is it's on experiences. It still is being driven at the margin by travel, entertainment and things like that. And other things have moderated except for insurance payments, which we can see people pay on their insurance.

And so it's good. And so that's good news. And if you go -- but it has slowed down and I think it sets up the question, we got to keep the consumer in the game in the US economy because it's such a big part of it. And they're getting a little more tentative and that is due to everything going on around them. Goods are more expensive, they are shaping their spending....

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